It was a cutting little refrain from the gleeful Gooners, but all’s fair in the white heat of a north London derby and it sure beat Spurs fans pelting Theo Walcott with coins after a season-ending injury.

Yet this was a song which summed up the weird ‘reverse xenophobia’ which has infected the Premier League and left it with only four English managers.

Roy Hodgson refers to it as the “exoticism of the unknown” - the idea that Pepe Mel can roll up at West Brom to a fanfare while a former England international and Premier League title-winning midfielder can be ridiculed because he comes from a commuter belt town in Hertfordshire.

Yet with the exception of that FA Cup defeat by the Arsenal – in which Spurs were thoroughly outplayed – early indications suggest that Sherwood might be pretty ****ing good indeed.

Sunday's convincing away win at Swansea, those high priests of possession football, means that Sherwood has gathered 16 points out of 18 - the best Premier League start made by any Tottenham manager.

Dane Michael Laudrup had suffered a home defeat to Sherwood’s team, just as Southampton’s Argentine Mauricio Pochettino had done.

Both men had been touted among the ­favourites to replace Portuguese Andre Villas-Boas, whose appointment as Spurs boss, so soon after his failure at Chelsea, said it all about the ­preferential treatment shown to foreign coaches.

It is not just the bare statistics of Sherwood’s early reign which have impressed, but the manner of his decision-making.

There is a theory – espoused by Sherwood’s mentor Harry Redknapp, though not by Villas-Boas – that football management is not actually rocket science, that the best managers do the simple things well.

So, your team has been struggling for goals. You have a proven prolific Premier League scorer named Emmanuel Adebayor in your ranks on a vast six-figure weekly wage.

Sherwood, it seems, will have to secure a top-four spot at the very least if he is to prove anything more than a stop-gap.

Even though chairman Daniel Levy is an admirer of his work with Tottenham’s youth system, where he had been the driving force behind the promotion of young Englishmen such as Kyle Walker and Danny Rose.

Aware of this, ­Sherwood is ­determined not to die wondering.

He understands the ethos of the club, ‘To dare is to do’ – words never written on AVB’s clipboard.

He may have a penchant for a good old-fashioned 4-4-2 but this is a manager willing to make bold decisions, capable of motivating sulky mercenaries and unashamed in his desire to ­entertain.

He just happens to come from Borehamwood.

It makes you wonder how many more English football men there might be who are capable of doing the same if only they were given the chance.

If Sherwood doesn’t lead Spurs into the Champions League this season, we might be wondering a good while longer.

Right up until the point where Hodgson leaves the England job and there isn’t a single native coach capable of replacing him.